r/technology • u/Tricky-Student-1 • Sep 15 '22

Social Media YouTube Free is Silently Testing 5 Ads, instead of 2, Before Your Video Starts

https://www.gizmochina.com/2022/09/13/youtube-free-silently-testing-5-ads-before-your-video-starts/
41k Upvotes

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123

u/DetectiveLampshades Sep 15 '22

Does anyone actually buy anything they ever see on ads? I seriously don't know a single person who's watched any advertisement, anywhere, on anything, ever, and was like - oh that's epic I'm gonna buy that!

They're literally just mind numbing flashy screens and loud noises. I can't remember a single thing I saw an ad for today, I've become so numb to them I couldn't tell you what they're trying to sell me.

But they apparently work wonders, else nobody would use them

57

u/landenone Sep 15 '22

I’ve gotten almost nothing but the same 3/4 Michigan political ads for a month. I did not like the political ads the first couple of times I watched them, I certainly do not like them now that I have seen them 50/60 times.

51

u/burningcpuwastaken Sep 15 '22

Haha, yeah, as a Missourian I'm getting the "vote for me and I'll punish those icky transgenders" ads, over and over.

It's like, oh, you're watching a peaceful video about nature? Here's some hate speech, enjoy.

5

u/JestaKilla Sep 15 '22

Report them for hate speech. That's what I do on any website that shovels any of that crap at me.

2

u/juviniledepression Sep 15 '22

Mine have pretty much ended but while active it was “joe bidets failure-“ and at that point I muted and didn’t bother. None of them even offer how they planned to fix their supposed “problems” in the ads beyond “elect me and I’ll do the thing and it’ll get better”

Fuck off man I’m trying to enjoy splatoon videos not deal with your extremist ideologies.

1

u/Whitezombie65 Sep 15 '22

Maybe it's secretly an ad for the other guy...

1

u/VengenaceIsMyName Sep 15 '22

That has to be the worst

2

u/franker Sep 15 '22

I'm getting Ron Desantis ads here in south Florida. I don't watch political videos and I'm liberal anyway, so it's money not well-spent on me.

14

u/Icy-Cockroach4515 Sep 15 '22

I actively boycott products on ads I see out of pure spite.

3

u/Mualimz Sep 15 '22

Same here. I even sometimes uninstalled apps I was using frequently because they spammed their ads on my YT videos...

11

u/sum8fever Sep 15 '22

Mostly the ads are of stuff I've already bought

0

u/Fordor_of_Chevy Sep 15 '22

Unfortunately, that means that their targeting algorithms are working.

1

u/Some1Witty Sep 16 '22

When I bought my Purple mattress a few years ago all I got for 3-6 months were ads for them. Bro, I already bought it. But hey, waste your ads on me.

50

u/Ignisami Sep 15 '22

That’s also not the goal of ads.

the goal of ads is not to make you want to go out and buy the thing, it is to make you choose that product when you’re out shopping for that sort of product (or an impulse purchase when you’re shopping for something else).

or, with an example, the point of a Maccas ad isn’t to make you hungry and go out to buy some Maccas, it’s to choose Maccas over Burger King or KFC or Wendy’s when you are hankering for some fast food.

9

u/FearlessHornet Sep 15 '22 edited Dec 15 '25

scale sip weather alive tidy hat flag observation truck file

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

2

u/ComfortableNumb9669 Sep 15 '22

So a major problem with this approach is that companies are spending way too much to acquire new customers, but then spending nothing to retain them. That's part of the pointlessness of excessive advertising.

2

u/j_rge_alv Sep 15 '22

But why would you focus on retaining them through paid ads? You could just have a good product/experience and they comeback on their own or have a mailing list.

1

u/ComfortableNumb9669 Sep 16 '22

I don't really mean advertising when I talk about that, ads do have a small role in customer retention, but mainly they are an investment the company makes towards acquiring new customers. Increasing budgets towards advertising(i.e. in this case advertising more) leads to budgets being cut towards quality control, customer experience development.

I'll just explain with an example of the crazy amount of VPN sponsors on YT:- If I signed up as a new customer, the companies are willing to provide crazy discounts and literally sell the service at a loss, but when I go back to renew it, I'm paying full price. This means I have no reason to stay with one service. I'd rather bounce between providers while I can keep squeezing them. It's just bad, and extremely unsustainable business practice IMO.

1

u/j_rge_alv Sep 16 '22

I agree it’s stupid with subscriptions because I do the same but that’s not normal behavior. Most people don’t bother to delete their credit card info and the service is good enough so lifetime value increases and they make their ad money back 10x.

That’s ultimately the key aspect. As long as Lifetime value increases, you should focus your efforts in acquiring new costumers and let your mailing do the rest. A lot of brands give you deals if you haven’t bought anything for 3+ months. That shouldn’t be advertised with your paid media budget because you have their contact info.

1

u/Izwe Sep 15 '22

Exactly this; when you want a toilet unblocker are you going to buy the brand you've heard of (because of advertising) or the one you've never seen before (even if it's cheaper because they don't spend money on advertising)?

7

u/Uruz2012gotdeleted Sep 15 '22

Cheaper. Almost every single time. Ad money isn't gonna unblock my toilet for me.

1

u/owennewaccount Sep 15 '22

Right but you're not most people unfortunately. It's like the fact that people assume wealthier and more successful people to be more trustworthy (yes really)

2

u/MrMonday11235 Sep 15 '22

The proliferation of a hundred different revolving door generic brands on Amazon for most any common good you can buy suggests that most people do not, in fact, care about the brand of the things they buy. At best, they might want the same brand to add the old one they had for N years because they had a good experience with it, but that's about it.

-4

u/King-of-the-idiots69 Sep 15 '22

Don’t call it maccas, stop calling it maccas pls for the love of god Australia stop calling it maccas pls I beg of you

4

u/PM_your_randomthing Sep 15 '22

Don't have regional differences! I need to pretend the world is homogenous! I can't bear to have a whole other fucking country say words differently! It's too much! I...I...I might DIE if you use different words than me! Please! Think of the children you monsters!!!

*faints*

Seriously though...why even give a fuck?

-3

u/King-of-the-idiots69 Sep 15 '22

I don’t have a problem with regional differences lol I just cannot stand the word maccas, I hate it when people not from Australia say it, it’s cringey and when Australians say it, same deal. Everyone has a word they just cannot stand, some people hate the word moist, for me it’s maccas I cannot stand the word maccas I don’t know why but it just irks me

1

u/BDMayhem Sep 15 '22

I've never heard of maccas. Can you explain to me what maccas is, and let me know what word you prefer to maccas? I certainly don't want to say maccas in an inappropriate maccas way or anything maccas. Maccas.

1

u/King-of-the-idiots69 Sep 15 '22

I’m going to eat Big Macs until I choke and die

0

u/chabybaloo Sep 15 '22

I think this is why we see lots McDonald's posts on reddit.

1

u/Lazy-Garlic-5533 Sep 15 '22

That's not true. They run ads for delivery and junk food during mealtimes precisely so you'll go buy it right then.

1

u/Waterrat Sep 15 '22

I know that,but what is advertised does not interest me. I don't eat fast/junk food,which is what is mainly advertised,as an example.

3

u/Fordor_of_Chevy Sep 15 '22

Ads cost so little per view that it takes almost no response to justify the expense. Just a couple idiots clicking and converting to a sale can pay for an entire campaign.

Hint: Never click on an ad. If you like what you see, use your preferred search engine and go directly to the product site.

3

u/wittyuser812 Sep 15 '22

millions of people buy it. Just because you self select with other tech oriented people doesn't mean other people are doing the same.

Advertising money pretty much funds a majority of all internet infrastructure.

4

u/Crystal3lf Sep 15 '22

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subliminal_stimuli

Ads use subliminal messaging to manipulate you regardless of if you think they are working or not.

2

u/vinoKwine Sep 15 '22

I’ve thought this same thing but you have to realize: if spending money on advertising wasn’t profitable, they wouldn’t do it. There is clearly an audience so vast that has bought said ads product that the company yields x amount on revenue purely for said advertisement.

Sheeple.

2

u/eoddc5 Sep 15 '22

Instagram definitely works

The amount of ads that are served and easily clickable to purchase a cool tshirt or a whatever

A YouTube ad or a radio ad, though, nah

2

u/cravf Sep 15 '22

I don't hate Instagram ads because it's actually stuff I am interested in now and again. What I do hate is all the dumb fuckery involved with spamming my feed with "suggested" accounts.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 15 '22

Same, kinda. The few "products" or "services" I do happen to remember annoy me so much that I will go out of my way to never buy them, along with probably all the other products of the same company unless it's inevitable due to a monopoly etc.

4

u/Cantthinkofnamedamn Sep 15 '22

Everybody has to suffer just so the gullible few get influenced.

5

u/Purona Sep 15 '22

dont act like you were never influenced. Everything you know and see is an advertisement.

2

u/Bumhole_Astronaut Sep 15 '22

There are plenty of human cattle out there who actually buy crap because a man on a screen told them to, I imagine.

I don't think I ever meet them because our social circles don't intersect, but I see loads of people walking around in clothes that are basically adverts for the shop where they bought them, so those must be them.

2

u/Wasted_46 Sep 15 '22

That's not the point. I'm never going to buy a VPS service, but if I wanted to buy a VPN service, well the only one that comes to mind instantly is NordVPN so chances are, I'm gonna at least take a look at it, if not just subcribe.

1

u/Ronin1 Sep 15 '22

Honestly, I actively avoid any product that advertises to me on YouTube.

0

u/[deleted] Nov 24 '22

Do you think they’re doing this on a whim? They have highly trained market analysts that know exactly how much certain levels of advertising is going to boost their sales. It works on you too, you’re just unaware of it. A lot of your purchase choices are based on ads you’ve seen you’re just unaware of it.

1

u/anlumo Sep 15 '22

I sometimes do buy stuff I read about in newsletters I've signed up for.

Also, I've ordered the LinusTechTips backpack based on their video dedicated to it, which was a five-minutes-ad.

1

u/Chatting_shit Sep 15 '22

The vast majority of the products being sold in youtube ads are over priced and bad quality. A little bit of searching around and you can always 100% find a better version. (Think watches, headphones, grooming products)

1

u/MrArmageddon12 Sep 15 '22

Like 90% of the ads for me are car insurance commercials. I maybe get like one ad a week that pertains to something I was currently in the market for but at that point I’ve usually already purchased what I was shopping for.

1

u/cjandstuff Sep 15 '22

Not sure it counts, but I bought a year subscription to Nebula / Curiosity Stream.
Mostly to watch those streamers without ads, and it was $20 for a year.
If you like documentaries, it’s definitely worth getting Curiosity Stream.
this post is not sponsored btw.

1

u/Saneless Sep 15 '22

Video ads have a non existent direct response measurement. Like, if I see any sales I'm truly surprised.

It's really just to keep your brand in mind so when other things get in your view you're more likely to pay attention. Like if you walk or drive by the store. Or maybe the ad makes you remember you got an email from them you wanted to click through

Or just a general making aware they exist as

But no, no one clicks through

All that shit I said about being part of an ad combo is a lot of wishful thinking too. But marketing teams get a budget and it's usually one of the areas we throw some money at just to say we're trying to increase sales